How to register your songs before you release them

Most royalty problems start in the thirty-day window between finishing a record and releasing it. Nobody touches the paperwork, the record comes out, the money moves around, and years later there is nothing to collect because nobody registered anything. The work takes two hours. The window closes the moment you hit publish.

Two things you own

When you write your own beats and record your own raps, you own two distinct assets. The composition is the song: the melody, chord progression, and lyrics. The master is this specific recording of that song. Both assets generate royalties through entirely different channels, and registering one does not register the other.

Most of the music industry’s paperwork was built around the assumption that songwriters and recording artists are different people, because in major-label history they usually were. When you are the artist, the producer, and the songwriter, the registration burden that normally falls across three or four entities lands on you alone. That is not a disadvantage if you know it is happening.

Copyright registration

Before anything else, file a copyright registration with the U.S. Copyright Office at copyright.gov. Use Form SR (Sound Recording). If you own both the composition and the master, Form SR covers both in a single filing.

Your copyright exists the moment you create the work. You do not need to file to own it. What filing does is establish a dated federal record. If someone infringes your copyright, a timely registration (filed before the infringement, or within three months of publication) makes you eligible for statutory damages and attorney’s fees. Without a registered copyright you can still sue, but you can only recover actual damages, which are much harder to prove and often amount to less than the cost of litigation. That is the practical gap.

The filing fee runs around $65 for a single work online as of this writing. Check current fees at copyright.gov before you submit, because fees change periodically.

If you want to register several songs from the same session under one submission, collection filings exist, but the rules have restrictions. A single-work filing per release gives the cleanest paper trail.

File before the record comes out. You can file after, but if something goes wrong in the gap between release and registration, you lose access to statutory damages for that window.

PRO registration: the composition’s performance royalties

A performing rights organization collects royalties on the composition every time it is publicly performed. That includes radio, live performance, the performance royalty portion of streaming, TV and film sync, and background music in businesses. In the United States, your options are ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC.

ASCAP and BMI are the two you will actually choose between as an independent. Both collect and distribute performance royalties. Both require you to join as a member and then register each song individually. Neither charges ongoing dues to songwriters. ASCAP charges a one-time $50 application fee on the writer side. BMI is free to join. Both have been paying out royalties for decades.

SESAC is invitation-only, so it is not a choice you make.

The practical differences between ASCAP and BMI are small enough that the most useful rule is to check which one your regular collaborators are on. You cannot hold membership in both as a songwriter. If a co-writer is on BMI and you are on ASCAP, both organizations have to split and track that royalty, which is workable but adds friction. Most working writers pick one at the start and stay. If you have no collaborators yet, either one is fine.

What the PRO does not collect: mechanical royalties. Those come through a separate channel. In the United States, digital mechanicals from streaming are now administered by the Mechanical Licensing Collective. Register directly at themlc.com. It is free, and it is specifically for the composition’s mechanical royalty from on-demand streaming. Your distributor may also offer mechanical administration as an add-on service; that is an option if you want everything in one account, but direct registration with the MLC is available to anyone.

When you register a composition with your PRO, you need the title, the list of writers, and each writer’s ownership percentage. Register every release, every time.

SoundExchange: the master’s digital performance royalties

SoundExchange collects digital performance royalties for the master recording on non-interactive platforms: Pandora, SiriusXM, internet radio stations, and some cable music channels. When a listener’s Pandora station plays your song without them choosing it track-by-track, SoundExchange collects that royalty and pays it out.

This is a different royalty from what Spotify or Apple Music pays. Spotify pays a per-stream rate to rights holders. Pandora’s non-interactive model generates a separate royalty that flows through SoundExchange, and it does not overlap with your PRO payment.

Register at soundexchange.com as both the Featured Artist and the Sound Recording Copyright Owner. If you own your masters, you register both roles. It is free to register.

If your music will only be on interactive streaming services and you have no plans to distribute to non-interactive radio, SoundExchange will collect less for you, but the registration costs nothing and prevents money from sitting in unclaimed limbo.

ISRC: the recording’s identifier

The International Standard Recording Code is a 12-character identifier assigned to a specific recording. It is how streaming platforms track which version of a song played and credit the right party. Every recording needs its own code: the main version, a clean version, and an instrumental are three separate recordings with three separate ISRCs.

Your distributor assigns codes as part of the upload process. DistroKid, TuneCore, and CD Baby all handle this automatically. The drawback is that a distributor-assigned code is tied to that distributor’s account. If you move distributors later, the code does not automatically travel with you.

If you want to own your ISRCs outright, register as an ISRC registrant through usisrc.org. The fee is around $95 for a registrant account, after which you generate your own codes at no additional cost. Owned codes travel with you regardless of which distributor you use. For an artist planning sustained catalog growth over several years, that $95 up front is worth it. For someone releasing a small number of tracks, distributor-assigned codes are fine.

Keep a spreadsheet of which ISRC corresponds to which recording. That record matters when you are trying to trace a royalty discrepancy two years from now.

The order, and the actual deadline

File copyright registration at copyright.gov (Form SR). Do this before release or within three months of it.
Join a PRO if you have not already. Register the composition.
Register with the MLC at themlc.com for digital mechanicals.
Register with SoundExchange at soundexchange.com for non-interactive digital performance.
Confirm your ISRC: verify the distributor assigns one on upload, or generate your own before submitting.
Submit to the distributor.

The hard deadline is step 6. Once the submission goes in, the ISRC is locked, the release date moves, and if you have not registered with your PRO, you are playing catch-up while royalties accumulate in the unclaimed pile. You can register the copyright and PRO after release, but you lose the statutory damages protection for any infringement that happens in that gap.

None of these registrations takes more than thirty minutes individually once your account is active. The accounts themselves can take a day or two to set up on first use. Budget two hours of work spread over a few days, and build this into your release process before you are in a time crunch.

The splits and delivery side of this is covered in release your first single properly. Once the registrations are done, how to release a rap single on streaming services picks up with the distributor submission and first-week push.

Two registrations, not one. Copyright first, then the PRO, then SoundExchange if you are on non-interactive platforms. ISRCs before you submit. None of this is glamorous and all of it matters more than the press photo.